I'm a young, single mother of a four month old boy and I've done, what I think, is good job of raising him on my own this far. Ever since he was born I've been on the fence about getting him vaccinated, which is something that was never questioned in my family before. I have had all my immunizations and am up to date with everything. However, I care too much about my son to go along with something that makes me uncomfortable. I know you're supposed to start vaccinating at 2 months, and with my son being 4 months, I'm starting to catch hell for not getting him vaccinated. How do you handle this and has it made any of you actually change your mind into getting your child vaccinated? I've been told that I need to step up and be a parent and that I'm uneducated. All these comments are made by family members. My own sister said I cant bring my son over anymore because of all this.

Isn't it amazing how people suddenly feel they can make better decisions for your child than you can when it comes to immunizations?

I have 5 children. The various times we've had to visit the dr I have been asked if my child is caught up on his/her immunizations. I always tell them we do not immunize for personal reasons. The only time we have been badgered is when my oldest three became ill with pertussis (the "p" part of the DTP or DTaP). That was 6 years ago and we have never had anyone have a problem with it since.

If you plan on sending your child to daycare or public school you may be pressured at that point. Many daycares won't accept children that aren't immunized. The school may tell you the same but most states allow parents to sign a waiver form (you'll have to see what the laws are for your state). We homeschool and I'm able to stay home with my children so we haven't had to deal with that.

I know many people who don't immunize and I've found one thing in common amongst us...we avoid the subject like the plague :) . The easiest way to deal with friends and family is not to tell them. If the subject has already been brought up tell them you feel it's a private decision one way or the other and you don't feel it needs to be discussed.

Just to reassure you it usually becomes old hat with the family. After a while it's not such a big deal anymore and they let it go.

You should know also that you do have options. It's not just a matter of immunizing or not. I know people who only vaccinate against certain illnesses and not others. I know people who will only immunize after the age of 2 and I know people who only immunize after 6 months but only with certain vaccines. I also know families that will immunize one child, choose certain ones for another and then not immunize another child (they believe each child has different needs and they base their schedule on what they feel is best for that individual child).

I believe you are responsible for your child's well-being. The best thing you can do is educate yourself as much as possible about vaccinations. Do not make a decision out of fear one way or the other but out of earnestness for what you believe is right. Also, never feel that you ever have to explain your position to anyone...you don't.

I do plan on informing my children as they grow about vaccinations. It will be their decision if they want to be vaccinated as young adults.

How odd that parents who don't immunize their children get blamed for being "undeducated". I know so many moms who take their children in to be vaccinated and they have no idea what the child is being vaccinated against or what exactly is in the vaccine.

An informed decision is always the best decision. Knowledge replaces fear with power.

Love and Prayers, Kelly

P.S. Just so you know I don't advocate vaccinating or not vaccinating. Even though we have decided not to vaccinate I fully support parents who have decided to immunize their children. The only "wrong" decision is the decision to go against what you feel is best...one way or the other. It's also not wrong to "change your mind" down the road. Circumstances change and we have to be open to going a different direction sometimes.

i just hope that none of you actually live in mn,we have four confirmed cases of polio here.while I can understand that you have to do what you feel as a parent is the best thing for your child,not vaccinating is the reason that these cases are now showing up here.The four children that have it were nevervaccinated.this does not just affect you and you children,this can have an affect on those of us with children with weakened immune systems due to cancer/chemo,transplants,HIV/AIDS and a host of other really nasty immunosuppressing conditions.Your non vaccinated children can compromise the health of many many other innocent people.the actual risks of not vaccinating and the resulting conditions are far worse than just having it done.Sure there ARE indeed risks in vaccinating but they are much lower than just taking your child out for a ride to the grocery store or even just being in the home,where most accidents happen.

honestly,i am not here to lecture you,but quite honestly,it IS the people that have vaccinated their children that is giving you the idea that the risks of not vaccinating are low,in reality,with so much world wide travel and the fact that we have so many people living here,or just coming and going into our country that are bringing with them all kinds of diseases that,in this country,were practically non existant,that the risks to your children right now, are much much higher than you think.polio,who would have possibly thought that in this day and age,it could possibly be showing up.but unfortunetly,it is alive and well.i really do think you need to rethink some of the reasons that you chose not to vaccinate,honestly,i would hate to hear that anyones child becomes ill and dies or becomes severely disabled from something that could have been prevented with a shot.i almost lost my son once,trust me,you do not want to go there.just some thoughts.i am not trying to slam anyone for their decisions but thought you really needed to know this latest news.things are only going to get much worse for our children,not better,with regard to what god awful crap is really out there.FB

Believe me when I say,i am totally empathetic to those parents really,it is really sad what happens to some vaccinated children.as the mother of a chronically ill child,believe me,i am extremely careful about anything and everything that goes into either one of my children.unfortunetly,there are no guarentees in life you know?everything we do and our children do all have possible risks attatched to them.all we can do is educate ourselves and hope we make the right decisions.i have seen shows like an episode of 20/20 that was on about ten years ago that really scared the crap outta me.it was about this subject,and the horrible reactions that these children had had to childhood vaccinations.it really did scare me to know that I put something like that into my child,but after reading like everything i could actually get my hands on ,mostly thru my doc and my childrens ped doc and the local library.(unfortunetly we did not have the internet back then)i came to the conclusion that I had done the right thing,really.I had researched this subject to some degree before my kids were vaccinated,and I did feel okay with it.but when I did even more research,after seeing that 20/20 episode,It really DID make me feel that i had made the right choice.the thing is,life in general is actually one big huge risk.but there are certain things that we have to do as parents in order to minimize those risks whenever possible.They now have yet another confirmed case of polio here that just showed up in another family.doesn't that scare you at all?when the risks of not vaccinating really overwhelm the possible risks of actually doing it,doesn't that even make you want to re think the decision,at least a little bit?some of the not vaccintaed children will face bigger risks if some of these diseases show up in them during adult hood.my husband became extremely ill with measles when he contracted it at age 22.he almost lost his eyesight from it and we were also told that his fertility could possibly have been affected.Luckily it was not and we had two children.it was not til then that i found out that his mother never really took him in to be vaccinated on the regular schedule when he was a child.since my son is now immunosuppressed due to transplant,we have to be very careful of certain things.my husband was given injections to get him immune,hopefully.the vaccinations actually have less chance of seroconverting in adulthood than when done in childhood.This whole issue is just so scarey every way you look at it.i did not come here to slam anyone,just to let you know that things that were thought to be gone are back.unfortunetly,i think the new polio re emergence is just the beginning of what may lie ahead for our kids.sad but true.marcia

Feelbad and Babyluv - I have a hard time with what you're saying. If immunizations are effective, why are you concerned with the non-immunized kids causing a wide-spread epidemic amongst everyone else (the majority of whom are immunized)? The fear for parents who choose not to immunize is the other way around - immunized kids actually have the virus in their systems... NOT the non-immunized. As dannysmom mentioned, the non-immunized kids who have been positively diagnosed with polio, most likely contracted it from a carrier of polio - someone who received it straight into their blood stream, whether it was an adult or a child. Polio doesn't just sit in a gutter for some kid to catch when they are splashing in puddles, and they most likely didn't contract it from a pet dog when they were playing with it. They had to have contracted it from a source that was hosting it. Anyone who has been vaccinated with the Polio vaccine is a carrier - it is in their system, whether or not it shows up through physical disabilities.

Non-immunized children do not spread disease - there is no disease in them to spread, until they get infected by someone who has it, and how did that person get it? Most likely from being immunized. What a brilliant idea - pay money and risk your child's health and well-being by diliberately injecting antigens into their blood stream and expect their immature and underdeveloped immune system to fight back.

I think this is a major point for parents who choose to not immunize. I will most likely immunize my children when they are 7 or 8 years old or more, after their bodies are more developed, but not earlier. Immunizations bypass the first FOUR natural systems of defense (the skin, the muscus membranes, the gut lymphoid system, and the rest of the entire lymph system) and deliberately place an antigen directly into the blood stream of a child whose organs and immune system are underdeveloped and immature. The mere presence of antibodies in no way proves effectiveness of a vaccine, or immune protection against a specific antigen. Doctors and scientists/biologist readily admit they do not know what antibodies do, what their purpose or their function is. To assume that because a vaccine causes a certain reaction of antibodies, that a person and even more so a child or infant is then "protected", is blind reasoning, based on documented medical and scientific studies. These can be found if you look in the right places (can't post them).

An excellent resource is Dr. Sherri Tenpenny - she is probably the foremost expert on vaccinations. Personally, I have two friends who were negatively affected by vaccines, one who contracted polio at the time of the vaccination, another who was also born perfectly healthy but after a specific vaccine, his physical development stopped and began to deform. He is now physically deformed from the chest down, is in an electric wheel chair and receives stipends from the US gov't for the rest of his life because of it (he cannot work or take care of himself). I have several friends who have huge divots in their arm from a vaccine they received as a child that destroyed the skin at the sight of the injection. I personally have experienced painfully swollen limbs, tingling, extreme burning and discomfort at the sight of injection and in that limb after receiving "normal" booster vaccines AS AN ADULT. In my own life and from my own personal experience and research, this overwhelmingly leads me to decide to never subject my own infant, baby or young child to these risks when their body is young and underdeveloped.

The pharmaceutical industry calls the tragic cases of children who are permanently damaged or worse, the children who die, from vaccines "for the greater good". Because it is considered (rightfully so) unethical to test the safety and efficacy of vaccines on children, the only means of knowing is strictly observational - meaning do it anyway and see what happens. If it's "bad enough" then something will change but otherwise, it's "for the greater good". Well, who decides it's bad enough? The parents who "wisely" trusted their doctors and nurses (who know as little, if not less than the parents about the safety and efficacy, and merely repeat what pharmaceutical sales reps have told them about their vaccine they convinced them to purchase and use - YES, pharmaceutical companies all have all of the same vaccines and compete in sales...Why do you think dr.s offices are stocked to overflowing with branded pens?) Parents whose children suffer adverse effects or worse, die from vaccines don't decide when it's "bad enough", and the children of the world continue to be the observational guinea pigs for the safety of vaccines. For those who have already been negatively affected or have died, their "observational" results came too late. Personally, I will not willingly allow my child to be a test and risk the possibility of them becoming a statistic "for the greater good".

Another thought to consider is if vaccines are supposed to work by deliberately placing an antigen into the bloodstream and "letting it loose" so to speak, and waiting and hoping the immune system will do its job (which is actually still pretty vague in the medical community), what is the difference between injecting the flu virus into the blood stream (who HASN'T gotten the flu (or what doctors say are "symptoms" of the flu, as if that makes the fact that the virus is in your system and your body is reacting as in... you have the flu... any less real than actually "having the flu"...it's just semantics) after receiving a flu vaccine?) What difference does it make to have it injected into your bloodstream and having "symptoms" and getting sick anyway ("that shows it's working!") or just waiting for it to somehow manage to bypass your first for God-given symptoms of defense and make you sick? It's not really different. This isn't necessarily the case with all vaccines, but a majority of them make no difference, symptomatically speaking.

Other things to consider are:

(1) the observable (if it's a good enough method for the pharmaceutical companies, why isn't it good enough for those challenging them?) rise of autism (a very easily linked side effect of vaccinations) in the human population (specifically western cultures) since vaccine schedules were implimented early in the 20th century, AND the serious LACK of autism in Amish communities (only 3 documented cases when, statistically speaking there should have been hundreds, and all three of them received vaccines - one was adopted from China and received vaccines before she was sent to the US, the second was a mennonite child whose parents were pressured by local health officials coming to their door on more than one occasion, and the third family could not be located)) who very stringently do not vaccinate their children.

(2) the observable link between vaccinations received at 2 months, 4 months and 6 months, and the overwhelming majority of SIDS cases occuring at those times, when children have received vaccines (this can actually be documented by examining publicly available death certificates of infants from your local morgue, whose deaths are listed as SIDS and under "Cause of death" a photocopy of "Adverse Reactions" from a vaccine has been attached.

For all these reasons, parents choose not to vaccinate their children.